Mountain Message Blog

Tuesday, August 14, 2018

Summer Time Maintenance Continues

In another installment of “What do you guys do all summer”!

These past few weeks have been quite active here with work on
the lifts. As we’ve previously mentioned each lift has 20% of the chairs
removed for the grips to be serviced and rebuilt. Well part of that process
includes a NDT or Nondestructive Testing process. This process, which was
conducted by Aerial NDT out of Milton, NH, looks for failure points not visible
to the human eye in the materials used on the lift. Using ultraviolet lights, magnets,
magnaflux solutions, and ultrasounds, the team is able to find any cracks or
stress points that could cause a failure. If these are found, the part is
placed into retirement and a new part takes its place.

The following photos show the process in practice here at
Ragged. Fortunately, no parts were found to have any failures or stresses and
we passed our NDT with flying colors. There is a photo of a cracked axle that Aerial NDT brought with them to show
how the ultraviolet light and magnaflux solution works to highlight parts that would need to be replaced. There are also a few
photos of our lift parts in the wet magnaflux bath, ultrasound testing, and
using a high powered, hand-held magnet and dry magnaflux powder.